The year of virtual reality has been full of ups and downs for our young industry. The launch of the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, and Google Daydream, however, are several of the highest highs. The technology may not be in dozens of millions of households quite yet, but in time it will grow to become more and more ubiquitous. One man that acutely recognizes that growing trend is Otto Berkes.
Berkes is one of the original founders of Xbox at Microsoft and is currently Chief Technology Officer at CA Technologies after serving as the EVP, Technology and CTO at HBO. In his time at Microsoft, he helped create the high-quality Xbox brand that’s globally recognized as one of the leading game consoles. At a time when the world only knew Nintendo, Sega, and PlayStation, Berkes helped Xbox emerge onto the scene and usher in a new age of high-powered gaming.
In an interview with CNBC, Berkes discussed his thoughts on the boom of the virtual reality industry and what it could mean for content creators going forward:
“We’re entering another golden age of interactive content development,” said Berkes. “One of the aspects of VR that has incredible potential is interaction and communication – interacting with characters that are both artificial and virtual, being able to blur distance and geography, you can be anywhere and literally in any time. I think the interaction needs to be natural, there is a little bit of a disconnect right now when you put on the headset. The implementation is well done, you are transporting them to the space, but you put your hands out in front of you and they are not there. I think we’ve crossed the first big threshold which is the visual and auditory aspects of VR, but the interaction piece still requires a bunch of work.”
Worth noting is that he is decidedly agnostic in his praises of the industry, not naming any particular manufacturers or content creators. And while we still don’t know exactly what Microsoft is up to in the VR industry, we do know that they will be joining the scene more holistically next year with their upcoming $300 PC VR headsets and the Xbox Scorpio, which is poised to be a powerful console VR platform.
